Artists Shouldn't Be Telling Me About Revolution
Story and Art by Hector Gonzalez

I've been drawing my whole life and writing poetry since a young boy.   When I was young I would draw images of war and death. When I was older and was able to critically analyze the images that I drew, I decided to write about them. I was born In El Salvador and lived there until the age of six during the civil war -- one of the most brutal wars in recent history.     

My poetry developed into rapping when I was 10 and now at the age of 22 I am releasing an album project. I have had the opportunity to perform in many venues in San Jose as well as meet a lot of people involved in the same art forms that I'm involved in. I meet talented individuals that are making some pretty tight music as well as some very powerful artwork. And although I appreciate the art that people are creating, I don't always appreciate the content of their work.

In the genre of spoken word -- a verbal, urban, poetry performance -- there is an assumption that the person speaking has a powerful message to deliver. Although the message that he/she delivers is delivered in dramatic overtones and in a compelling fashion, most of the time the message delivered is not their own.

Let me explain, it seems that having a spoken word artist is a must on college campuses, particularly in the activist crowd. Somehow it is assumed that the poet can reveal the cries of a struggle in the best form. They usually do poems of a struggle that they never fought and of people that they don't have any ties with, except for maybe their skin color being the same tone. At different spoken word functions, open-mics, and even political organizing events I see these people. They sometimes have dreadlocks with no real ties to Rasta, wearing Kufi's with not ties to Islam. I see this in almost all areas of urban art culture -- film, spoken word, and even in Hip Hop. Most of the time, it's not the clothing that stunts me, it's the content they speak that catches my attention.

Words like “revolution” and “struggle” are easy to include in your poem, especially when you just got a good lecture about it in your Political Science class. And although there is definitely a message to be spread, these artists are the last ones to be talking about it.

Although a march or rally shouldn't be the ultimate tool of measure of someone's political views, it seems that there lacks an integrity when such artists are doing anti-war poems but don't show up to an anti-war march. I've heard a poem on almost every single political struggle that I can think of and when the people begin organizing around it, whether it be police brutality or education, I have yet to see such an artists march with us. I wonder what the poet talking about revolution would do really if a real revolution where to break out.

The greatest historical example that I could give is Diego Rivera who was a Mexican painter. He was a Communist and his paintings depicted the Mexican struggle. He painted farmers, revolutionist, indigenous people and so on. Rivera was highly criticized because although he painted such things, he was far from a farmer and by no means was he a poor man.

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Story by G.Melesaine
Art by Thuy Ngo
August 18, 2005